Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
JULIAN
Finally, work is going smoothly. The shipments that have come in over the past two days have gone off without a hitch. No sign of Sergei’s men, no interruptions. The product is now off to its new owners in Vancouver, Canada, and I’m richer than I was when we landed.
Today is my last full day here, and I’ll be spending it with my wife, spoiling her like crazy after this last meeting.
“Hello, Sir.” Antonio nods with respect. He’s carrying two briefcases, and he’s flanked by two guards, both armed to the gills.
They should be. He’s carrying roughly a hundred million dollars in precious gemstones.
I’m sitting at my desk in the office of my building, casually tapping my closed switchblade on the wood, waiting for Antonio to unpack the gems and spread them out on the black velvet laid out before me.
Jack is standing behind me, and I have six of my soldiers with us. No one will fuck with these stones.
Antonio puts on his gloves, and then starts spreading out the gems. My heart speeds up, the way it always does when I see stones like this. This is what I nerd out over. I can talk about carat weight and clarity and color ad nauseam.
But Antonio doesn’t know that. He and his boss think I’m just another buyer, another go-between who buys the stones and then resells them.
That’s mostly true.
I will sell these for a tidy profit.
But I also know what the fuck I’m looking at.
Calmly, I pull the loupe out of my drawer and pick up the first stone, taking my time with it. I weigh it. And when I’m satisfied, I set it aside and pick up the next.
Pink diamond from the Argyle mine in Western Australia. One of the rarest diamonds in the world. Roughly four carats.
“Are you going to examine all of them,” Antonio asks, and I lift my eyes to him, raising an eyebrow.
He shifts on his feet and clears his throat as I pin him in a stare, not saying anything for a long moment.
“Do you have somewhere else to be?” I finally ask.
“No, of course not. Carry on.”
My eyes flit from his face to his guards before I return to the task at hand.
Blue diamonds. White diamonds. Everything I discussed with Antonio’s boss is here.
But there’s one stone we need to have a conversation about.
I fist the one in question in my hand and then nod for Jack to take the others away. He quickly rolls them in the velvet and stows them in a locked hand-carry safe.
“This one.” I open my hand and keep my eyes on Antonio, who licks his lips and has a light sheen of sweat on his brow. “Let’s talk about it.”
“What would you like to discuss?” he asks, trying to look innocent.
He’s a bad fucking liar.
“Tell me about it.”
His brows pull together for just a heartbeat. “Well, it’s a blue Cullinan diamond, eight carats—”
“What’s it worth,” I cut in.
“Approximately eight million dollars.”
I stare at him, unblinking, until he clears his throat and tugs at the collar of his shirt.
“This is worth about, oh . . .” I look down at it and tilt my head side by side, as if I’m pondering it. “Jack shit. It’s fucking fake.”
Antonio starts to shake his head, but I stand, and his eyes widen with fear.
Good.
He should be afraid.
“It’s not fake,” he says.
“Here’s my loupe,” I say, passing it over to him. “Have a look for yourself.”
Carefully, he takes it from me and examines the stone, and by the time he looks back up at me, his face has gone white.
“I don’t know how this happened.”
Nodding, I sigh and put my hand out. Jack passes me a hammer, and I swing it at my side.
“The thing is, Antonio, I think you’re skimming. I think you planted this fake, and you have the real stone, which you’re going to sell yourself. That really pisses me off.”
I glance at his guards.
“He’s been paid in full for the real gemstones. You can leave.”
Without thinking twice or arguing, the two men leave the room, and Antonio starts to shake.
“I swear, I don’t know what happened. I would never—”
“Sure you would.” I lean on the desk, as if we’re just having a nice civilized conversation and Antonio isn’t about to lose the function of his right hand.
“It’s eight million. A nice little take for someone like you, Antonio.
I bet you only make about a million a year, so if you swipe one of these every six months or so, that puts you in a nice spot.
Makes it so you don’t have to do this forever.
You can retire on a beach somewhere and disappear. ”
I shake my head, as if I’m disappointed in him.
“The thing is, I’m damn fucking smart. I’ve already learned everything there is to know about you. I know what your taxes look like, the balances in your bank accounts. Those match.”
His shoulders loosen.
“However, they don’t match the twenty million you have stashed in the Caymans. I also know that you have a sister in Orlando, who likes to go to Disney every Saturday. Your niece is in Paris, studying abroad.”
He’s sweating profusely now, and it brings me immense satisfaction.
“You see, I don’t appreciate it when someone tries to double-cross me. What do I do when that happens, Jack?”
“You destroy them, boss.”
“I’ve heard,” Antonio mutters, and I tilt my head to the side.
“What have you heard?”
He shakes his head, like he didn’t mean to say that out loud. So I get closer and stand over him. I have at least six inches on him.
“What. Have you. Heard?”
“You almost killed your wife,” he whispers.
“Idiot,” Jack mutters as anger moves through my veins.
“Is that what you heard, Antonio?”
He nods and licks his lips, and I turn to Jack.
“Different tool.”
He takes the hammer and replaces it with my cleaver, and when I turn back, Antonio takes a step back, but I shake my head.
I strike fast, grab his hand, pin it to the desk, and then remove it with one hard chop of the cleaver.
Antonio starts to scream as one of my soldiers fires up a butane torch to cauterize the wound.
I can’t have him bleeding out in my office.
“Now, you listen to me, you piece of shit. You’re lucky I didn’t kill you for simply thinking about my wife. You stole from me, and not only will you pay for it, but you’ll send a message back to your boss. If this happens again, I take your head without warning, am I clear?”
Tears roll down his face as he nods.
“Good. Have a nice day.”
I turn my back on him, and my men escort him out. Jack sighs.
“Did you have to take the whole hand? This is going to be a bitch to clean up.”
“You haven’t cleaned up blood in a decade,” I remind him. “We have people for that. And yes, I did. He mentioned my wife.”
Jack shakes his head but knows better than to say anything else.
“That concludes my business,” I tell him. “I’ll be out with Natasha today. You can take the jet back if you want. I’m keeping eight men here with us.”
“When will you be back in Vegas?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’ll go back, then. Call me if you need me.”
“Same goes.”